torsdag 29 april 2010

Läs hela texten här: "...in recent years several respected international lawyers and scholars, among them Jacques Gauthier and Howard Grief, have helped raise awareness of the legal foundation of the modern state of Israel which came into effect when the Balfour declaration was incorporated into international law by the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers in San Remo in 1920 and later approved unanimously by the League of Nations at the Peace Conference in Lausanne in July 1922.”- At a time when even the core existence of Israel as a Jewish state is being challenged by its enemies it is of vital importance that we take a closer look at international law,” said conference organizer Tomas Sandell from the European Coalition for Israel. He then reminded the audience that ”the San Remo Resolution of 1920 recognized the national Jewish sovereignty on the land of Israel under international law, on the strength of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the territory previously known as Palestine.”

”- This marked the end of the longest colonization in history,” noted Salomon Benzimra from Toronto. ”Palestine has been occupied and colonized by a succession of foreign powers for about 1,900 years (Romans, Byzantines, Sassanid Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, Mameluks, and Ottoman Turks). This early episode of liberation, which preceded the global decolonization process by more than thirty years, should be welcome by all progressive minds.”The primary objective of the commemoration event was to raise awareness of the historical facts about the legal foundation of the Jewish state which dates back to the San Remo conference of 1920 and precedes the Israeli declaration of Independence by 28 years."

UN Watch BriefingAnalysis and Commentary from UN Watch in GenevaApril 28, 2010 — Issue 226Letter to UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi PillayApril 28, 2010Dear High Commissioner Pillay,We wrote you on March 24, 2010, requesting that the UN Human Rights Council website cease hosting an anti-Semitic text (A/HRC/13/NGO/23) that, in a modern adaptation of the medieval blood libel, falsely accuses Israeli doctors of a racist conspiracy to steal Palestinian organs.We are grateful to have recently received a reply, sent from Chief of Human Rights Council Branch Eric Tistounet. This response, however, rejects UN Watch’s request while ignoring our argument. We urge you to overturn this decision, for the reasons explained below, and to immediately remove all such hateful material from the UN website. We also call on you to speak out against the moral inversion that, in its mere four years of existence, has already become the hallmark of the UN Human Rights Council.First, we address your office’s reply. It justifies doing nothing about the text submitted by the “International Organization for Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination” (EAFORD)—a group created in Libya and closely tied to Col. Kaddafi’s regime—on grounds that the UN purportedly plays no screening role, simply publishing all submissions as received.That premise is demonstrably untrue.Mr. Tistounet quotes from the footnote of the UN cover sheet affixed to NGO written statements, which indicates that the latter are “unedited.” This quote, however, is selective, incomplete and misleading.The same cover sheet indicates at the top that such statements are circulated “in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31.” As your officers well know, Article 31 of that resolution requires them to engage in a process of “appropriate consultation” with the submitting organization, with the latter required to give “due consideration” to any “comments” that your officers may make “before transmitting the statement in final form.”In other words, contrary to the premise that forms the basis of Mr. Tistounet’s decision, the rules say explicitly that your office does play a screening role.Not only is this the official procedure, it is also standard practice. As already stated in our complaint, your office carefully screens all NGO submissions before deciding whether or not to publish them. Following are three examples.UN Watch recently submitted a written statement—indeed to the very same March 2010 UNHRC session in which the organ-stealing blood libel was readily circulated—and your office refused to publish it as received. We were told to remove the word “regimes” where we had referred to the regimes ruling Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Sudan and Zimbabwe.Second, we were then informed that our reference to “Burma” was not allowed—only the military junta’s adopted name of “Myanmar.”The third example concerns a 2005 submission, in which UN Watch submitted a written statement to the now-defunct Sub-Commission on Human Rights. It featured excerpts from an article I had published in The New Republic. Our statement questioned the propriety of such serial human rights violators as Cuba, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia sitting on the UN Commission on Human Rights, and noted that “Havana, Harare, and the House of Saud” controlled the committee that ruled on victim petitions.It further pointed out that Ms. Halima Warzazi, then head of the Sub-Commission—and today chair of the UNHRC Advisory Committee—was personally responsible for shielding Saddam Hussein from UN censure after Iraq’s 1988 genocidal gassing of Kurds in Halabja.All of this was unacceptable to your office, which duly informed UN Watch that “when referring to certain States, Heads of States, or even certain members of the Sub-Commission, the language used was not entirely in accordance with accepted United Nations standards.” NGO submissions, we were told, had to be “imbued with the appropriate level of dignity and respect.” Until we made the required changes, your office informed us, processing of our statement was “suspended.”Therefore, it is clear that not only does your office screen and, when so inclined, suspend NGO submissions, but its editorial policy appears, from a moral perspective, to be upside down: Pro-democracy statements that expose the serial human rights violators who sit in judgment on others at the UNHRC are rejected as being “not entirely in accordance with accepted United Nations standards” and not “imbued with the appropriate level of dignity and respect”; whereas hateful statements, which demonize Israelis as Nazi-like perpetrators of “ethnic cleansing” and “pogroms against Palestinians,” and accuse “Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli Army” of a conspiracy to steal organs of “dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians,” are approved, and, by necessary implication, deemed to be entirely in accordance with “accepted United Nations standards.”Madame High Commissioner, how can this be the policy of the foremost intergovernmental agency charged with promoting human rights?Worse, as I am sure you will agree, this is not the first anti-Semitic statement by EAFORD to be published, distributed and web-hosted under the imprimatur of the UN Human Rights Council, which has been on notice for some time about the hate emanating from this group.In September 2008, your office reviewed, approved and circulated an EAFORD written statement (A/HRC/9/NGO/1) calling Israel an “illegal state”—an even harsher term than “regime.” Far worse, however, this text, in the guise of a rhetorical question, went on to accuse “Jews everywhere” of having “forgotten the terrors of the Holocaust to such an extent as to allow Israel to pursue and inflict one on the Palestinian people.”After it was published, UN Watch immediately requested and obtained a private audience with then UNHRC President Martin Uhomoibhi. We explained that accusing “Jews everywhere” of complicity in a Nazi-like genocide amounts to the depiction of an entire people as absolute evil, which is anti-Semitism by any definition.Indeed, as the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism recently testified before a committee of the U.S. Congress, “Criticism of Israel crosses the line to anti-Semitism when, for example, that criticism applies double standards, comparing a current policy of Israel to that of the Nazis, or holds all Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel, or denies that Israel has a right to exist… At the UN, anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment often overlap.”Sadly, however, this text accusing “Jews everywhere” of absolute evil remains published on your office website to this day (see second statement listed here), in contravention of the UN’s own anti-racism principles, as found in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Beyond these particular hateful statements, however, let us acknowledge the context in which this betrayal of founding UN values is allowed to occur, a broader culture of moral inversion that extends deeper, into the very essence of the UNHRC’s work:

-Since it was created in 2006, the council has issued 40 condemnations of countries—with 33 of them targeting democratic Israel. As a result, the world’s true abusers of human rights, including the most serious perpetrators, continue to go ignored.- Out of the council’s nine emergency sessions that criticized countries, six have been against Israel. Recent and well-publicized killings of innocents—in Iran, China, Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Zimbabwe—have gone completely ignored.- The council’s agenda, which governs every session, features a permanent item targeting Israel. No other country in the world is singled out in this fashion. The council’s anti-Israel resolutions, the one-sided Goldstone Report, the hateful statements by EAFORD—all of these appear under the rubric of this biased agenda item, which has come to symbolize the council’s systematic discrimination against Israel.

Madame High Commissioner, if the equality provisions of the UN Charter are to have any meaning, this bias—casting a shadow upon the reputation of the UN as a whole—must end.In his historic 2004 speech, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged that “the United Nations’ record on anti-Semitism has at times fallen short of our ideals,” and in this context specifically cited the 1975 resolution equating Zionism with Racism as “an especially unfortunate decision.”Secretary-General Annan pledged that “the human rights machinery of the United Nations has been mobilized in the battle against anti-Semitism.”Madame High Commissioner, as the head of this human rights machinery, can you please tell us: Where is this mobilization, and where is this battle?Secretary-General Annan specifically called on your office—whose resources include 982 employees and a budget in this biennium increasing from $312.7 million to $407.4 million—to “actively explore ways of combating anti-Semitism more effectively in the future.” He called on all parts of the Secretariat to be vigilant.Madame High Commissioner, where is this vigilance?Secretary-General Annan concluded his call to action by proclaiming that “Jews everywhere must feel that the United Nations is their home, too.”Yet Madame High Commissioner, how can this be possible so long as your website continues to host a statement that, to a worldwide audience, declares “Jews everywhere” to be evil?In conclusion, therefore, we urge you to overturn the rejection of our request, and to immediately remove these anti-Semitic texts from your website.More broadly, we urge you to use your global podium to speak out—regularly and forcefully—against all manifestations at the UNHRC of demonization, disproportionality and double standards, which violate the noble principles upon which the United Nations was founded.UN Watch is situated directly across from the UNHRC headquarters, and I stand ready to meet with you at any time to explore ways of achieving corrective action on these urgent matters.Sincerely,Hillel C. NeuerExecutive Director

MK vows to ‘raise awareness of Israel's rights' To mark the 90th anniversary of the San Remo Conference, at which the Allied powers incorporated the Balfour Declaration into international law by pledging to give the Jews a national home in Palestine, several events were held over the weekend held in the Italian resort town.All of the events were organized by the European Coalition for Israel in conjunction with Canadian Supporters for Israel’s Rights, who wrote in an introductory note for the weekend’s proceedings:“We do not believe that diplomacy should be divorced from international law,” the note read. “None of the recent peace plans issued to date mentions the legal rights of Israel enshrined in international law. This seminar will take a closer look at the historical and legal realities of the Middle East, based on the proceedings of the San Remo Peace Conference in April 1920.” SAN REMO CONFERENCE

torsdag 22 april 2010

Kuwait poet Ahmad Al-Kandari: "We call upon the Arab rulers to stop being naïve, to stop submitting [peace] initiatives, to stop tormenting the Palestinian people, to stop being so feeble and weak, and to support the mujahideen of Hamas, not [Mahmoud] Abbas, the traitor.

Kuwait MP Jama'an Al-Harbash: "Allah willing, a war will be waged between us and them – the war foretold by the Prophet Muhammad: 'Judgment Day will not come before you fight the Jews – with them on the west bank of the river, and you on the east bank – and the trees and the stones will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.' This war is drawing near, Allah willing."

Jonathan Spyer skriver om hur FN-resolution 1701 som avslutade kriget mellan Hizbollah och Israel 2006 totalt ignoreras av Hizbollah och dess vapenleverantörer Syrien och Iran. Nya vapen levereras till Hizbollah och omvärlden ser på utan att ingripa. Resolution 1701 säger att alla beväpnade grupper i Libanon skall avväpnas men idag är Hizzbollah den bäst utrustade terrororganisationen i världen.Waiving the rules on the Syrian-Lebanese border "The West should use resolution 1701 to roll back Hizbullah's effective take-over of the Lebanese gov't. The summoning by the United States of Syrian Deputy Chief of Mission Zouheir Jabbour for a review of Syrian arms transfers to Hizbullah is the latest evidence of the serious basis to the recent tensions in the north.Syria has continued to deny recent reports suggesting that it permitted the transfer of Scud-D ballistic missiles to Hizbullah.But the issue of the Scuds is only a significant detail within a larger picture, which has been emerging into clear view since August 2006. This is the reality in which UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the war between Israel and Hizbullah in 2006, has been turned into a dead letter by the “resistance bloc” of Iran, Syria and Hizbullah.It is worth recalling that Resolution 1701 was hailed as a significant achievement for diplomacy at the time. The resolution was supposed to strengthen the basis for the renewed Lebanese sovereignty that seemed possible after Syrian withdrawal in 2005.Its provisions are quite clear. The resolution calls for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that... there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.” It also explicitly prohibits “sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government.”Hizbullah and its backers calculated, correctly, that neither the government of Lebanon, nor the United Nations, nor the “international community” would be able or willing to enforce these clauses."

måndag 19 april 2010

En intervju i Jerusalem Post med israeliska ministern Ya'alon kan läsas här: 'War of Independence hasn't ended' In special Independence Day interview, Strategic Affairs Minister Ya'alon discusses wide conceptual gaps with the US, the Iranian threat, and why no settlements should be removed – ever.Netanyahu: We want peace, but not at the price of security Israel wants peace with its neighbors, but not at the price of security, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday at a ceremony on Ammunition Hill on the eve of Remembrance Day. “Not one day has passed without us reaching out to our neighbors in peace. Not even one day, and we still reach out to those of our neighbors that desire peace,” said Netanyahu, who made his statements in the midst of a stalled peace process with the Palestinians.“Over the years, we have learned that the olive branches of peace will only be attained if we are strong and are willing to defend our country as did those who have fallen here,” he said.Since coming into office, Netanyahu has expressed readiness for direct talks with the Palestinians. They, in turn, have refused to sit down at the table with Israel unless it halts construction in West Bank settlements and east Jerusalem. Netanyahu has refused to meet both demands, although he has curbed construction in Judea and Samaria.

torsdag 15 april 2010

Ari Rusila skriver om hur det under de senaste femton åren pumpats in 20 miljarder dollar till palestinierna utan att det har gett någon bestående effekt på samhällsutvecklingen.Stora summor har bara försvunnit. Dr. Ghania Malhis som är ordförande för The Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute höll ett föredrag om ämnet vid ett FN-seminarium i Wien den 25 mars.(UN Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People on 25 March 2010 in Vienna.)Rusila baserar sig på Dr. Ghania Malhis undersökning International Assistance in Support of the Palestinian Economy: The Role of Regional Partners”.Läs mera här:Palestine – Placebo effect for people and society with 20 bn bucks"The core conclusions of Dr. Ghania Malhis were that, despite the considerable economic help from various institutions of the international community and NGOs – about 20 billion US Dollars over the last 15 years“it has been almost impossible to trace any positive impact of these mobilized resources on the ground”"Dr. Malhis summarizes the International assistance to the Palestinian people as follows:The international assistance to the Palestinian people has an accelerated annual growth rate. The average annual contribution from 1994-2000 represented 500 million dollars and jumped to an average of 1 billion dollars a year from 2001-2005. Although 2006 witnessed a slight decrease registering 716 million dollars, the numbers rapidly escalated to 1.5 billion dollars in 2007, 1.7 billion in 2008, 1.8 billion in 2009 and is expected to reach almost 2 billion dollars in 2010. "

måndag 12 april 2010

Idag firar man i Israel Förintelsens minnesdag. Klockan 10 ljöd sirenerna över hela Israel och bl.a. trafiken stannade upp.Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day with sirens, memorials (Haaretz)"Israel fell silent on Monday morning as a two-minute-long siren wailed across the country to mark Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Day. As the siren sounded at 10 A.M., traffic came to a total standstill. Drivers stood next to their cars and pedestrians stopped walking, many of them standing at attention or with their heads bowed. The siren opened the annual memorial at Yad Vashem, Israel's state Holocaust memorial authority, in Jerusalem. Wreaths were laid at the foot of the memorial for the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Other ceremonies will be held throughout the day at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai and Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, as well as in schools and military bases. Yad Vashem picked "Voices of the Survivors" as the theme of this year's commemoration, which began Sunday night with a state ceremony and continues through Monday evening. A special exhibition of the works of Holocaust survivors will open at Yad Vashem on Monday afternoon. "The voice of the survivors is the link that binds the painful and tormented history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to the future, to hope and to rebirth," Yad Vashem said on its Web site. "

Glorifying terrorism (Jerusalem Post)"By actually locating the Fatah-led governmental hub on a street named for a Hamas mass-murderer, the PA seems to signal unequivocally where its heart is. A Channel 10 news crew, headed by correspondent Shlomi Eldar, was detained and later expelled by Palestinian Authority police in Ramallah last Wednesday. It had filmed the street where the PA’s new presidential compound is being erected but irked the local constabulary when its cameramen focused on the street-sign bearing the name of arch-terrorist Yihye Ayash. During the 1990s, Ayash gained notoriety as “the engineer.” His professional specialty was rigging explosives designed to take as many lives as possible. Primarily Ayash was an anti-Oslo saboteur, a fact which ought to make it doubly strange that the present Ramallah regime would even consider honoring him......THIS IS no new twist of the plot but consistent policy. Back in 2008, Abbas handpicked five female recipients for the PLO’s highest medal of heroism. Three had been foiled in their homicidal attempts. Not so the two stars. Amana Mona lured 16-year-old Ofir Rahum via Internet chats to a cruel death on January 17, 2001. Ahlan Tamimi planned the August 9, 2001 attack on Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria and drove the suicide bomber to the destination where he killed 15 persons, including seven children and five members of a single family. "Monitoring Palestinian incitement is not enough (Jerusalem Post)"Incitement is defined as “stirring to action, attempting to persuade.” A good example of incitement in the PA would be a fiery speech against Israel by a politician or an imam. Indoctrination, on the other hand, is defined as “instruction in the rudiments of a belief system” or, more simply put, brainwashing. An example of indoctrination would be a Palestinian TV program that teaches young children that all of Israel is Palestinian territory, and that suicide missions are the highest form of martyrdom.There are critical distinctions between the two which highlight the need to address them separately:1. Who they target – adults vs. childrenWhen an Imam or politician preaches hate to an adult audience, those assembled generally have the ability to assess the speech and make their own judgments regarding its veracity. Conversely, when children’s TV shows, textbooks, etc. teach young Palestinians that Israelis have no historical ties to the land, that Jews are evil, that terrorism is justified, etc., the children targeted are being brainwashed to believe what they are being taught. Unlike adults, they are not yet able to assess the quality of information being fed to them. They become the unwitting vessels of the poison being served. In this regard, indoctrination is an educational form of child abuse that is like statutory rape of the mind. It is a human-rights violation against which children’s rights activists should be up in arms.2. The shelf life of the message – temporary vs. foreverMessages of incitement to adults can be turned on and off like a spigot, depending on the needs of the Palestinian governing body. Once youngsters are indoctrinated, however, they will likely believe the vile things they were taught for the rest of their lives, and act on them. Israel can make all the concessions requested of her tomorrow, yet an entire generation of Palestinians will still harbor the hatred they were spoon-fed to their dying days. Indoctrination is therefore a much greater threat than incitement to the long-term prospects for peace."

De palestinska ledarna verkar inte heller så intresserade av normala relationer med Israel.Förutom att de vägrar förhandla med Israel fortsätter de med att hedra terrorister. Det senaste exemplet är när en avliden terrorist, Abdallah Daud, hedrades med statsbegravning och både Abbas och premiärminister Fayyad lovordade honom.The duplicity of Fayyad and Abbas:Preaching non-violence while honoring terroristsContrary to statements by both Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Chairman Mahmoud Abbas supporting a "non-violent resistance," their actions continue to implicitly support violence and terror. As Palestinian Media Watch has reported, the PA leaders have repeatedly honored terrorists in well-publicized acts of support in recent months.The PA leadership's most recent show of terror support was last week, when both Abbas and Fayyad honored one of the notorious terrorists of the first years of the Palestinian terror war (the "Intifada"). The terrorist Abdallah Daud headed the Palestinian intelligence service in Bethlehem, and was actively involved in the Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians. When Israel entered Bethlehem in 2002 in an attempt to eradicate the Palestinian terror, Abdallah Daud was one of the most wanted Palestinian terrorists who stormed into the Church of the Nativity. For several weeks, Daud and his fellow terrorists continued fighting against Israel from inside the church, essentially using the monks and the religious site as their shields.Abbas sent his personal emissary to the funeral. He spoke in Abbas's name: "We must maintain the way of the Shahid (Martyr) Daud, who always believed in the struggle, in love of the homeland, and in the realization of national unity." [Al-Quds, March 28, 2010]Palestinian PM Fayyad chose to honor the terrorist publicly and in person by paying a condolence visit to the home of his family. Fayyad "enumerated the Shahid's (Martyr's) virtues" and noted his "suffering from the injustice of his expulsion." The story of his honoring the terrorist was also reported on the front page of the official PA daily.Hamas börjar verkställa dödstraff i GazaHuman Right Watch och andra mänskorättsgrupper försöker förmå Hamas att återta sitt beslut att börja verkställa dödsstraff.HRW to Hamas: Don’t resume executions in Gaza “We are dealing here with convictions in trials that don’t come close to meeting fair trial standards,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Hamas authorities should not take the backward step of starting to impose the death penalty, especially when people facing execution have suffered unfair trials.”

Ett team från Israel (från Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya) har vunnit den prestigefyllda Jean-Pictet Competition, där man tävlar om kunskaper i internationella krigslagar.I tävlingen i Canada deltog 44 universitet från hela världen.The laws of war – Israelis know them best “For an Israeli team to win a competition in the field in which Israel is so often criticized is significant,” said the team’s academic supervisor, Daphné Richemond-Barak. “The Jean-Pictet is the most prestigious competition in the field worldwide.”

tisdag 6 april 2010

Här kan man se en intressant intervju med USA:s fredförhandlare George Mitchell. Intervjun gjordes för ett par månader sedan och då hade USA inget som helst problem med att Israel byggde bostäder i Jerusalem. Snabbt ändrar politikerna åsikt.Se intervjun här: George Mitchell, U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East (vid 5 min. börjar GM tala om Jerusalem)Såhär uttalade sig Mitchell om bosättningarna och Jerusalem: (från Commentary Magazine)GEORGE MITCHELL: … So what we got was a moratorium, ten months, far less than what was requested, but more significant than any action taken by any previous government of Israel for the 40 years that settlement enterprise has existed. …CHARLIE ROSE: And you and Secretary Clinton praised Prime Minister Netanyahu for agreeing to that.MITCHELL: Yes.ROSE: It does not include East Jerusalem. There’ve been announcement in the last 48 hours of new settlement construction in East Jerusalem where the Palestinians want to make their capital.MITCHELL: Yes.ROSE: And it’s in the midst of Palestinians.MITCHELL: … But for the Israelis, what they’re building in is in part of Israel.Now, the others don’t see it that way. So you have these widely divergent perspectives on the subject. Our view is let’s get into negotiations. Let’s deal with the issues and come up with the solution to all of them including Jerusalem which will be exceedingly difficult but, in my judgment, possible.The Israelis are not going to stop settlements in, or construction in East Jerusalem. They don’t regard that as a settlement because they think it’s part of Israel. …ROSE: So you’re going to let them go ahead even though no one recognizes the annexation?MITCHELL: You say “Let them go ahead.” It’s what they regard as their country. They don’t say they’re letting us go ahead when we build in Manhattan.

Gaza teen 'killed' by IDF recounts Egyptian prison ordeal "Muhammad Farmawi, the 15-year-old boy from the Gaza Strip who was thought to have been killed by IDF soldiers last week, revealed on Monday that he had been held in an Egyptian prison.Farmawi, who went missing on Tuesday last week, said he infiltrated the Egyptian border through an underground tunnel. He said that he and several Palestinian teenagers who were with him were tortured by Egyptian soldiers while in prison.The teenager is now being dubbed by Palestinians as The Returning Shaheed [martyr]."